ASSUR AND NINEVEH, 159 
and in Babylonia. As will be seen later, however, this decoration 
was employed in the later structure. 
It is needless to say that brick structures such as these were 
constantly needing repairs, and the successors of the builders 
were accustomed to regard it as their duty to carry them out. 
Tiglath-pileser L., the son and successor of ASSur-rés-i8i, fwfilled 
this task with great thoroughness, and records it in detail on his 
great cylinders, now preserved in the British Museum, and 
published in the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, vol. 1, 
pl. 15, 1. 60 ff. This king states that the temple tower was 
built or founded by SamSi-Adad, viceroy of ASSur, about 1821 
years B.C. It had been demolished by ASSur-dan, who ruled 
about 1200 B.c., but this king had not been able to rebuild it. 
For some reason which does not appear, Tiglath-pileser does not 
refer to the work of his father ASS8ur-rés-18i—perhaps he ouly 
began the work towards the end of his reign, and Tiglath-pileser 
may have had the superintendence of it, for he expressly states 
that it was at the beginning of his reign that the gods ordered 
their dwellings to be rebuilt. He then made the bricks, cleared 
the site, reached the core, and laid the foundation upon the 
ancient nucleus—brickwork first, and then blocks of stone. He 
built it, he says, from its foundation to its battlements, and 
made it larger than before, and he rebuilt also the two great 
temple-towers, which were adapted to the dignity of the two 
gods’ great divinity. Here it may be noted that translations 
similar to this were made before the discovery of the site, so that, 
if there were any doubt as to Assyriologists having found out the 
way to translate the wedge-written inscriptions, the temple of 
Anu and Adad would, in itself, suffice to prove beyond a doubt 
that the renderings were correct. The interior of the two-fold 
temple, he says, he made bright like the centre of the heavens, 
decorating its wall like the. glory of the rising of the stars. 
Having founded the holy place, the shrine of their great divinity 
within it, he caused Anu and Adad, the great gods, to enter there, 
set them in their supreme seat, and thus eladdened their hearts. 
After a description of the bit hamri, which seems to have 
been the treasure-house attached to the temple, or to one of the 
two shrines (that of Adad) which it contained, Tiglath-pileser 
calls upon the gods whom he had thus honoured to bless him, 
and hear his supplication, granting fertility and plenty to his 
land, and in war and battle bringing him safely back, etc. He 
states that he had performed the usual ceremonies, anointing 
the memorial-slabs of Samsi-Adad, his father (ancestor), with 
oul, sacrificing a victim, and then restoring them to their place. 
